via BoingBoing: This example of cardboard animation is awesome. You have a marginal narrative. Small enough not to get in the way. What you get are city scapes. Google take note: Cartoons against background increases capacity to navigate. Put another way, if you empathize with (or in this case, feel disgust for) something you can place yourself somewhere.

That’s what the Aspen Project/Google Earth approach lacks. It’s third person versus second person. The only book I remember reading in second person was Bright Lights, Big City, which had something about a ferret in The New Yorker, and the phrases “Peruvian marching powder” and “all messed up and no place to go”. Perhaps it said something about society. I digress. The important thing is to watch the video. Then maybe go out and make one yourself.

Don’t underestimate the power of paper in film. Bob Dylan used it to great effect in Subterranean Homesick Blues, an iconic video that was made before videos were made.